Baselines

Baselines — values that represent the norm for resource behavior — help you quickly identify problems with your resources. With baselines, you can automate metric analysis and have HQ automatically flag you when resources deviate from normal performance. By default, HQ automatically calculates the baseline values for all dynamic metrics.

• Uses for baselines in HQ
• Establishing a baseline
• How a baseline is calculated and associated settings
• Where to view baselines

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Uses for Baselines in HQ

Baselines can help you provide:

• Trending Analysis: The most common use of baselining is as a performance management tool for trending analysis. Using HQ, you establish and retain the same metric baseline value over a specific period of time, then include the baseline when you chart the current values of the metric. You can then identify trends that will help you to estimate future performance or needs.
• Service-Level Management: To manage service-level agreements, you measure actual performance against agreed-upon minimum service-level values. Using HQ, you specify the acceptable high and low values for the metric then include this range of acceptable values when you chart the current values of the metric.
• Exception Management: You can monitor application health — watching for changes in problem indicators, a proactive form of fault management — by defining an alert based on either the baseline, the high, or the low metric values. For example, you can set up an alert that triggers when the metric value is more than 25% of the baseline value.

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Establishing a Baseline

HQ automatically and continually calculates and updates baseline values. However, in some cases (usually when there is not enough metric data for HQ to automatically calculate the baselines), it's useful or preferred to establish baseline values yourself. There are two manual ways of establishing the baseline values from the metric values collected for the specified metric display range. Once a metric's baseline is established, HQ saves it and uses it each time the metric is charted, regardless of the currently specified display range. HQ uses this baseline value until it is recalculated, either automatically (according to the specified baseline frequency) or manually. "Low," "high," and "average" values are the lowest observed value for a metric, the highest observed value, and the average of observed values, respectively. "Low range" and "high range" refer to the user-specified lowest and highest acceptable values for a metric (effectively creating an acceptable range of values).

To manually establish a metric's baseline:

• On the "Current Health"" screen, on the tab, on the tab, do either of the following:
  • To set the acceptable low, acceptable high, and baseline values in one fell swoop, check the metrics whose baseline values you want to establish and click . This sets those baseline values of the selected metrics to the displayed LOW, PEAK, and AVG values, respectively.
    OR
  • To set the acceptable low, acceptable high, and baseline values individually:
    1. Click the metric whose baseline you want to establish.
       The chart screen for that metric is displayed.
    2. Follow these instructions for changing baseline values.

In either method, the baseline is established specifically for the selected time frame.

Establishing a baseline also has the effect of "resetting" the OOB count reported in the Dashboard's "Problem Resources" portlet.

How a Baseline is Calculated and Associated Settings

HQ continuously and automatically calculates the baselines for dynamic metrics it is collecting for a resource: it averages the observed metric values over a user-specified time frame. A baseline value for a metric becomes more accurate as more data is collected. HQ calculates the baseline values based on the frequency of calculation, the set of metrics to consider, and the minimum number of data points to use for calculation. You can change these values and thereby change how baselines are calculated.

To configure the calculation of the baseline metric:

1. Click Administration in the masthead menu.
2. In "HQ Server Settings," click HQ Server Settings.
3. Follow the instructions on the "Edit HQ Server Settings" screen for changing the baseline-calculation values.

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Where to View Baselines

Baseline values can be seen in a resource's chart on the "Charts" screen, which you can get to in a couple ways:

• Click a metric's name on the tab on the "Current Health" screen.
• Click a chart's name on the tab on the "Current Health" screen.

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